American Flatbread - Waitsfield Vermont

Each American Flatbread is made by the hands of real and wonderful people at our bakeries in Waitsfield and Middlebury, Vermont and Los Alamos, California. What began as George Schenk's backyard dream to create nourishment that satisfies the palate, heart, and soul has grown into coast-to-coast availability. For information on American Flatbread made in California, check out www.foodremembers.com.

We cook for you, and for ourselves, with the bountiful ingredients the world provides. We cook with fire of maple, cherry, birch, and oak logs piled, split into sticks, and stacked by hand. Dale, Matt, Becky, or Jay come in at five in the morning to get the fire going in the oven. It must be at nearly 800 degrees Fahrenheit in order to start baking at 7 a.m. We hand stretch our dough and then the assemblers place a stretched dough on a peel, brush on garlic oil and sprinkle kosher salt, and then top the breads with cheeses, herbs, and other toppings. Next, they pick up the peels and place the raw breads in one of three back spaces in the oven, directly on the soapstone. The baker cooks the breads in the wood-fired clay oven, tending the fire by adding wood of differing sizes to maintain both the temperature of the oven floor and the air heat in the oven. The Flatbreads take heat out of the oven as they cook. The baker not only manages the fire but moves the breads within the oven, turning new sides toward the flames and removing breads from the oven as they are finished.

The ingredients we use in cooking are chosen with care. We make tomato sauce from scratch every Tuesday, sautéing the mirepoix as well as simmering the sauce in a 60-gallon cast-iron cauldron suspended over a wood fire. Our roasted tomato and pepper salsa is made from scratch on Wednesdays, using the same cauldron and using the wood-fired oven to roast the tomatoes. The flour for the dough is made from organic wheat, milled into a white flour but with restored wheat germ for high protein, high fiber, and superb flavor and texture.

Food is fundamental. It is our most direct and intimate link with the world. The act of eating invites that which is foreign, and from the outside, in. The elements of food become the elements of ourselves. It is food that gives us both form and strength. We know that food remembers our touch and each action in making American Flatbread is taken with an awareness of interconnection and intention. At American Flatbread our actions are intended to create food that fills our hunger and tastes good to our mouths and to the depths of our being. American Flatbreads are baked from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday year round at our bakeries in Waitsfield and Middlebury Vermont and, since 2004, Los Alamos California.